Anonymous Supporters Tricked Into Installing Trojan

dsinc sends this quote from a Symantec report: "In 2011, dozens of Anonymous members who participated in distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks in support of Anonymous hacktivism causes were arrested. In these DDoS attacks, supporters using the Low Orbit Ion Cannon denial-of-service (DoS) tool would voluntarily include their computer in a botnet for attacks in support of Anonymous. In the wake Anonymous member arrests this week, it is worth highlighting how Anonymous supporters have been deceived into installing Zeus botnet clients purportedly for the purpose of DoS attacks. The Zeus client does perform DoS attacks, but it doesn’t stop there. It also steals the users' online banking credentials, webmail credentials, and cookies. The deception of Anonymous supporters began on January 20, 2012, the day of the FBI Megaupload raid."

Comments

Not hackers? Shocking!

[Anonymous Coward]

Further proof the bulk of "anonymous" are just brainless sheep on image boards.

Re:Not hackers? Shocking!

[arth1]

Further proof the bulk of "anonymous" are just brainless sheep on image boards.

Sheep? Yeah, most of them are. Much like anything popular, what you're mainly going to attract are sheep.

Brainless? Some, sure. I saw one that had decorated her Guy Fawkes mask "to make it prettier". Um. Yeah, brainless. But I think you'll find some smart ones too, if you look hard.

Image boards? Nothing in TFA points to that. It's easy to think of Anonymous as a bunch of 4channers, but that's not really true anymore, if it ever was. IRC and Twitter are probably more popular than image boards for those who go beyond just sniffing at Anon. Probably Facebook too for the more careless ones. But there's very little Anonymous on image boards these days.

Re:what could go wrong?

[Sorthum]

The circumstances surrounding this make it very hard to be sympathetic to people who get hit by it. "My banking information was compromised, and all I wanted to do was help take down the website of some entity that displeased me today" isn't really a rallying cry many people can get behind.

Re:what could go wrong?

[arth1]

"My banking information was compromised, and all I wanted to do was help take down the website of some entity that displeased me today" isn't really a rallying cry many people can get behind.

Well, no. It's too long.
"Tits, for great justice!" is shorter.

Who said that a battle cry has to reflect all your causes? I don't see US marines crying "to protect the dollar being usurped as de facto currency for international oil trade" either. Instead they go with a slogan they don't know what means, don't know how to pronounce, but is short and goes well with beer.

FBI?

[Black Parrot]

The summary and TFA seem to hint that this is an FBI sting, but the details don't seem to support that.

Maybe more will come out about it later.

Re:DDoS'ing is comparable to a mafia hit

[nstlgc]

The only purpose of a DDoS is to prevent somebody from being able to speak? Seriously? As far as I can tell they serve mostly a symbolic meaning. DDoS'ing visa.com will not silence Visa. DDoS'ing the site of Interpol will do nothing that hinders the working of Interpol in any way. Or do you actually believe that shutting down the Vatican website will mute the Vatican? No, I didn't think so either. But it makes for a great strawman argument, doesn't it?

Of course, DDoS *could* be used to silence someone who's only way of speaking out is through a narrow band on the Internet. And it probably is, too. But not in these cases.

Re:DDoS'ing is comparable to a mafia hit

[xyzzyman]

If you picket Walmart, you aren't physically stopping others from shopping there as they normally would. If you DDOS Walmart.com, you are stopping people from shopping there.

Re:It simply shows...

[sociocapitalist]

If I understood TFA correctly, the trojan was not distributed by Anonymous but by others who basically hijacked the distro, redirecting the wannabee DDOSers to another executable which contained the trojan.